"I'm curious," Serpine continued. "Why the pretense? Why go to all this trouble, why put yourself in this position? Why didn't you just stick with the detective?"

Bliss managed to shake his head. "We mightn't have been able to stop you," he said. "I know you, Serpine . . . you always have plans to fall back on. You were too ... dangerous . . . too unpredictable. I needed you to get the Scepter."

Serpine smiled. "And why was that?"

Bliss echoed that smile with one of his own, albeit a drained and sickly version. "Because once you had the Scepter, I could predict your actions."

"So you predicted my invulnerability?" Serpine laughed. "Oh, well done."

"No one's invulnerable," Bliss whispered.

"Yes, well," Serpine said with a shrug. "You're certainly not."

372.

Stephanie watched in horror as Serpine again pointed his right hand and Mr. Bliss contorted in agony. His screams reached new heights, and just when it seemed he could take no more, Serpine picked him up and, with his hands pressed against him, gathered the purple vapor in his fists. Bliss was blasted backward through the air, into a group of shelves at the far side of the room. He didn't get up.

Serpine turned back to Stephanie.

"Sorry for the interruption," he said as he picked her up. His hands gripped the lapels of her coat, and he lifted her off her feet, looking up at her as he spoke. Her right leg dangled uselessly, and that pain was all she felt. "How did you do it? How did you get so close without the Scepter alerting me? Some magic I don't know about?"

Stephanie didn't answer.

"Miss Cain, I know you're trying to hide it, but I can see the fear in your eyes. You don't want to die today, do you? Of course you don't. You have your whole life ahead of you. If only you'd kept out of all this, if only you'd left the death of your uncle alone, you wouldn't be here right now.

373.

"Your uncle was a very stubborn man. If he had just given me the key when I asked, you wouldn't be in this predicament. He delayed my plans, you see, caused a lot of unnecessary stress and bother. A lot of people are dead now because of him."

Stephanie's face twisted. "Don't you dare blame my uncle for the people you've killed!"

"I didn't want this. I didn't want conflict. I just wanted to eliminate the Elders and take the Book. Do you see how simple that would have been? Instead, I had to wade through a river of corpses. Those deaths are on your uncle's head."

Stephanie's hatred became a cold thing in her center.

"But you don't have to join them, Miss Cain. You can survive this. You can live. I see something in you. I think you'd like the new world that's coming."

"I wouldn't bet on it," Stephanie said quietly.

Serpine smiled patiently and leaned his face in close to her. "You can survive ... if you tell me how you got so close without the Scepter alerting me."

With no weapons left, Stephanie spat on him.

He sighed and threw her against a pillar. She smacked into it, and her body twisted and she dropped onto her back.

374.

Her eyes wouldn't focus. The pain was far away. She heard his voice as if there was a wall separating them.

"No matter. I am about to make slaves of the entire population of this planet, and then there will be no more secrets. There will be no magic hidden from me. And when the Faceless Ones return, this world will be remade as a place of splendid darkness."

He pa.s.sed her, a vague shape in the corner of her eye. She had to get up. She had to snap out of this.

The pain. The pain from her broken leg--she had to let it in. It was nothing more than a sensation now--she had to allow it to flood her.

She focused on her leg.

It was throbbing, the pain spiking, and with each new height it reached, her mind sharpened a little more. Then the pain came at her, cascaded over her with its full force, and she had to bite her lip to stop from crying out.

She looked up. Serpine was approaching the Book.

She gripped the edge of a countertop and pulled herself up onto her good leg. She 375.

grabbed the first thing she saw--a gla.s.s vial with green liquid--and she threw it. It hit Serpine in the back and it shattered, and the liquid turned to vapor and dissipated into the air. He spun, angry.

"You, my dear, have proven yourself to be far too troublesome for your own good." He raised his red hand, and from somewhere behind her the Scepter began singing again.

And then Skulduggery dropped through the ceiling, landing in a heap next to Serpine. The detective looked around.

"Ah," he said. "I'm back."

"You are," Serpine said, and Skulduggery looked up and saw him.

Serpine lashed a kick into Skulduggery's side and Skulduggery grunted. He tried to get up, but Serpine batted his hands away and grabbed his skull. He drove his knee into the side of Skulduggery's head, and Skulduggery sprawled onto his back.

Serpine looked over to Stephanie and then to the ground behind her and she turned, saw the Scepter. She lunged for it, but a purple tendril wrapped itself around her waist and she 376.

was yanked back onto her broken leg. She cried out as the pain shot through her.

Serpine whipped the tendril to the Scepter, pulled it into his left hand, and whirled, the crystal flashing with a black light that streaked toward Skulduggery. The detective dived as a whole section of the wall behind him turned to dust. Skulduggery drew his gun and fired, hitting Serpine in the chest.

"Still with that little toy of yours," Serpine said, amused and unharmed. "How quaint."

Skulduggery circled him. Serpine held the Scepter down by his side.

"You'll be stopped," Skulduggery said. "You've always been stopped."

"Oh, my old foe, but this is different. Those days are gone. Who is there to rise up against me? Who is left? Remember when you were a man? A real man, I mean, not this mockery I see before me. Do you remember what it was like? You had an army on your side, you had people willing to fight and die for your cause. We wanted to bring the Faceless Ones back, to worship them as the G.o.ds that they are. You wanted to keep them out, so that this infestation of humanity, this celebration of the mundane, might be allowed to live and thrive.

377.

Well, they've lived, and they've thrived, and now their time is up."

Skulduggery's finger tightened on the trigger. Black blood sprayed from Serpine's chest, and the wound instantly healed. Serpine laughed.

"You have caused me so much trouble over the years, Detective, it's almost a shame that I have to end it."

Skulduggery c.o.c.ked his head. "You're surrendering?"

"I'm going to miss this," Serpine said. "If it makes it any easier, you can think of your imminent demise as a good thing. I don't think you'll much like the world once my lords and masters remake it."

"So how are you going to kill me?" Skulduggery asked, dropping his gun and holding his arms out. "With your toy? Or one of these new tricks you've learned?"

Serpine smiled.

"I have been expanding my repertoire. So good of you to notice."

"And I see you've been playing around with necromancy again."

"Indeed. My very own pet Cleaver. Every home should have one."

378.

"He's a tricky fellow to put down," Skulduggery said. "I tried everything I know--he just kept getting back up."

Serpine laughed. "There's an old Necromancer saying: 'You can't kill what's already dead.'"

Skulduggery c.o.c.ked his head. "He's a zombie?"

"Oh no, I wouldn't a.s.sociate myself with those wretched things. He can repair, replenish, heal. A difficult process to master, but I am nothing if not accomplished."

"Of course," Skulduggery said, something new in his voice. "The medical equipment in the warehouse. The Cleaver was a test run, to see if the process worked. Then you did it to yourself."

"Ah, the great detective finally figures something out."

"Bells and whistles aside, Nefarian, he's nothing but a zombie. And so are you."

Serpine shook his head. "Your last words are pathetic insults? I was hoping for more. Something profound, perhaps. Maybe a poem." He raised the Scepter. "It will be a slightly less strange world without you; I just want you to know that."

Stephanie screamed his name as Skulduggery dived. Serpine laughed and the Scepter sent 379.

out its bolt of black lightning, but Skulduggery had seized the Book of Names and held it as a shield.

The black lightning hit the Book, which disappeared in a cloud of dust.

"No!" Serpine screamed. "No!"

Stephanie stared as the Book that the Elders couldn't destroy sifted through Skulduggery's fingers. He charged through the cloud, slamming into Serpine. The Scepter fell and rolled away. Serpine's hands closed around Skulduggery's neck, forcing his head back.

"You ruined it!" he snarled. "You ruined it all, you pathetic creature!"

Skulduggery slammed a fist into Serpine's face and batted the hands away. He stepped in with a jab that rocked the sorcerer's head. Serpine blasted Skulduggery with purple vapor, and Skulduggery was flung off his feet.

He landed on his side and rolled, coming up to his knees as Serpine whipped a tendril out for the Scepter. It sped toward him, but Skulduggery pushed outward at the air, breaking the tendril and knocking the Scepter off course.

Skulduggery gathered flame in his fist and threw it at Serpine, who barely managed to 380.

deflect it. It exploded on the wall behind him and Serpine hissed, stumbling away before being launched backward as the air rippled around him. He hit the wall and stayed there, high off the ground, held up by Skulduggery's outstretched hand from across the room.

"I'll destroy you," Serpine snarled, his emerald eyes blazing with hatred. "I destroyed you once. I will do it again!"

He struggled to raise his right arm. Skulduggery pressed against him harder, drawing on his last reserves. But Serpine refused to be beaten. The fingers of his red hand pointed at Skulduggery.

"Die," Serpine whispered.

Skulduggery inclined his head a little to the right, and didn't fall. Serpine's face contorted with rage.

"Die!" he screamed.

Skulduggery remained standing. "Looks like there's something that hand of yours can't kill after all."

A figure moved in the doorway. Serpine's laugh was one of spit and gritted teeth as the White Cleaver appeared.

381.

"So you have an immunity to my power. ... No matter. That scythe of his will shear through your bones. You'll be nothing but rubble when he's through with you. Cleaver, attack!"

But the Cleaver stayed where he was, and Serpine's confidence started to ebb. "What are you doing? Kill him!"

The White Cleaver took another moment and then walked away.

Serpine screamed his rage.

"You've lost, Nefarian," Skulduggery said. "Even your henchman is abandoning you. Even he recognizes your defeat. I'm placing you under arrest for murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and, I don't know, possibly littering."

Serpine spat. "You will never beat me. I will always find a way to make you suffer."

And then Serpine's green eyes flickered toward Stephanie, still lying on the ground.

"Don't," Skulduggery said, but Serpine was already moving his hand across his body. "Serpine, don't!"

Stephanie cried out as a pain more intense than anything she had ever felt scourged her 382.

body. Serpine twisted his fingers and the pain intensified, turning her cry into a scream, turning the scream to silent agony. She curled up, feeling something cold spread from her belly, a welcome numbness that canceled the pain, that moved into her arms and legs, that wrapped itself around her heart and seeped into her mind. And now there was nothing, now there were just vague images of Serpine and Skulduggery; a distant voice, Skulduggery calling out to her, but that too was fading. No pain now. No sound. Her eyelids fluttered. Serpine, with that grin. Skulduggery, holding his free hand out, and something moving through the air, everything moving so, so slowly.

The Scepter. It was the Scepter, and then it was in Skulduggery's gloved hand, and his fingers were tightening around it. He was raising his arm, and pointing, pointing the Scepter at Serpine, and the little crystal started to glow. It glowed dark, a pretty little darkness, and then the air cracked.

The coldness had overtaken her now, the numbness was everywhere, and the last bits that made her who she was were gradually drifting away. She didn't care. She didn't mind at all. Let them go. She didn't have a care in the world.

383.

Serpine's grinning face. His eyes. His smile. All those teeth. His skin, creased in savage pleasure. And now that skin was changing, and it was drying, and it was cracking, and the smile was fading, and the emerald-green eyes were losing their gleam, clouding over, and Serpine turned to dust that fell to the floor.

And there was a ringing, a ringing in her ears, and her fingertips were tingling, and warmth was rushing back to her and her heart was beating again and her lungs sucked in air and Stephanie gasped.

Skulduggery ran over and knelt beside her. "Are you all right?" he asked, but all she could do was shiver. Her leg twisted and she hissed in pain, but it was a bearable pain, it was a good pain.

"Come on," Skulduggery said, taking her arm gently. "Let's get you out of here."